


Complicated

by LandOfMistAndSecrets



Series: (Octopath) Tumblr Prompt Fills & Ficlets (NSFW) [8]
Category: Octopath Traveler (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon, bog standard slap slap kiss romance, they fight!, they kiss!, what a pair!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 14:24:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19395982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LandOfMistAndSecrets/pseuds/LandOfMistAndSecrets
Summary: Two men, two swords, and a whole lot of thoughts and feelings.





	Complicated

The blunted edges of their sparring swords came together, clacking and clanging rhythmically off one another as they exchanged blow after blow. They were evenly matched as ever, Erhardt with his furious strength and Olberic with his stubborn endurance, circling one another in the yard. The sun had dipped down low on the horizon, and their fellow knights had long since departed, leaving them to face each other alone, precisely the way they both preferred. Olberic’s arms and shoulders ached with the effort of catching and deflecting those relentless strikes, and sweat rolled uncomfortably down his back, between his shoulder blades, itching and distracting. He didn’t mind. All the discomfort in the world could not have broken his resolve, in this. 

“Come on,” Erhardt growled, tossing his hair back, sweat-slicked and glorious as ever to look upon. “Fight me, Olberic! You cannot stand there defending and naught else and hope to win the day!” He punctuated these words with another growling charge, another furious flurry of blows, and Olberic staggered backward against their force even as he turned them all aside in turn. 

He said nothing in response, merely readied himself for the next attack. Erhardt’s handsome face twisted in fury, and Olberic clenched his jaw and prepared himself for the ensuing exchange, gritting his teeth against the sheer power behind each strike. The man was so damnably _strong_. He was not accustomed to it, to the wild joy there was in finding his even match. Erhardt thought that he was teasing him, toying with him, drawing out their match simply to prove he could outlast him. 

Had he known the truth of it, perhaps he would not have been so angry. 

“Olberic!” Erhardt bellowed, his voice the thunder to the stormy expression on his face. His lip curled in sneering disgust. “Come at me!” he demanded. “Or are you too much a coward to press the attack?” 

It was a bit unfair, Olberic thought, that the man could be so beautiful even as he jeered and taunted. 

“Are you so eager to be beaten?” he replied, if only to delay him further. The truth was that he did not want the fight to end, not even to win it, and so he employed whatever tactics he could to draw it out. He was very good at enduring thus. “So incapable of breaching my defenses?” He scoffed, and Erhardt bristled. 

“Careful, Olberic,” he warned. “You may wish to ponder further on the reckoning you are inviting.” 

“Thus far I have seen little that concerns me,” he said, because he enjoyed the way Erhardt’s eyes lit up with fury. He could lose himself easily in the flickering green flame of that glare, he thought, even as he raised his blade, even as Erhardt tightened his grip on his own and swung forward with all his strength. 

He caught the blow and turned it aside, and he stepped forward as their blunted blades screeched against one another and drove his knee upward. Their light armor of padded cloth and linked chain ought to have rendered body blows entirely ineffective, but he was Olberic Eisenberg, and light armor was nothing. Erhardt staggered backward even as he bent at the waist with a rasping gasp, and Olberic hooked one booted foot behind his leg and sent him tumbling backward into the dirt. 

Even so, Erhardt was not quite defeated. He recovered himself easily, springing back to his feet before Olberic could press his attack -- though he had not intended to -- and spat at his feet. “A low blow,” he complained. “If that is how you wish to have it…” 

Olberic felt his face heat at the way he spoke those words, at the low, rumbling tone and the promise in them, too. There were many things he might have wished to have from this man, he thought with a little twinge of hysterical despair. Many things, especially if he continued speaking to him like that. 

There was a flicker of something in Erhardt’s eyes, then, and Olberic felt something like fear coil in him, cold and tight in his belly. Had he betrayed something, just then? Had he allowed his desire to show plain on his face? 

No time to wonder. Erhardt grinned at him, fierce and wide, and Olberic simply stood there, dazed and stupid, while he lowered his shoulder and charged into him, not even bothering to defend. He grunted as they collided, tumbling down together, and his blade went spinning off into the dirt, far out of reach.

“Bastard,” Erhardt flung the word at him, his tone full of contempt. He tossed his own blade disdainfully away, and Olberic blinked up at him, breathless and confused. “You damned bloody bastard,” he repeated, sounding more incredulous now, and then -- almost casually -- he drew his fist back and slammed forward, catching Olberic just beneath the eye. 

His head snapped back with the force of the blow, and stars exploded behind his eyes. He raised his arms to ward off a follow up, ears ringing, but instead of hitting him again, Erhardt leaned back atop him and laughed. 

Olberic cracked his eyes open, peering upward. 

“Toying with me, are you?” Erhardt accused, then, and though the fury in him had evaporated, there was still something burning in his gaze, in his eyes as they bore down at him, through him. Olberic swallowed, hard. 

“You are a formidable opponent,” he muttered. “But your emotions in battle are a weakness one can exploit, if they know of it.” 

Erhardt nodded absently along. “My emotions,” he repeated, flatly. “Oh, indeed. _My_ emotions, Olberic, aye, that’s rich. Very good.” 

“It is --” 

“And what of _your_ emotions, I wonder?” Erhardt reached down, and for a moment Olberic thought he might -- touch his face, perhaps, fondly trace the fresh bruise he had given him, and his breath left him completely in helpless anticipation. Instead, Erhardt grabbed a fistful of his hair, none too gently, and leaned in over him, his face blocking out the sun, the sky, all else in the world. “What do you feel, Olberic, when we meet each other thus?” 

“Naught but the thrill of battle,” Olberic insisted, but even he heard the breathy strain in the wheeze of his voice. He winced. 

Erhardt shifted atop him and squeezed his fingers in his hair, pulling it hard at the roots. “I think there is ought else,” he said, and then with his free hand, the one that was not entangled in Olberic’s hair, he reached down and caught him by the belt. “I am tired of guessing at what it means. You watch me, when you think I do not notice. You draw out our matches, you goad me at every turn! You have no idea how you vex me, I think. You do not know the half!” 

He could scarcely breathe, listening to this. “Erhardt,” he said, simply, his voice a rough rasp.

Erhardt released his grip on his hair and his body both, then, and pulled back with a disdainful snort. “You do not know. I cannot be distracted by you, Olberic. I cannot be tempted, into… into,” he gestured vaguely. “I have my own goals,” he said, and there was a strange sort of despair in the way he said it, one that Olberic knew only too well. All of their ambitions were for nothing if they were discovered to be anything more than what they seemed. 

But that Erhardt could possibly have been a man like him seemed impossible, beyond wishful thinking, the stuff of shameful fantasies played out in rare private moments, late at night. He could not help the way his heartbeat quickened and his face flushed hot with shame and hope. He licked his lips, unsure of what to say. All words seemed to have fled him utterly. 

Erhardt made a low, disgusted sound. He shifted to press his knee between Olberic’s legs, tight against the unmistakable proof of what he felt that stirred there. And Olberic shut his eyes, because he could not bear to see what expression he might make, having discovered it.

“I never intended to tempt you,” he said, as apologetically as he possibly could. “It was never my intention for you to ever know. I am sorry --” 

“Gods above, spare me,” Erhardt practically snarled down at him. “Sorry? You are sorry? You -- _you_ , Olberic Eisenberg, the godsdamned Unbending Blade himself, the most magnificent man this blighted land has surely ever known --” he cut himself off with a guttural, wordless growl. “I ought to have done this months ago,” he said, and before Olberic could even think to ask what he meant, he had his fingers back in his hair, pulling harder than before. He craned Olberic’s head back and face up, tightening his grip such that he nearly threatened to tear his hair from the roots, and then he brought their mouths together, rough and wild and every bit as fierce as any spar they’d shared beforehand. Olberic yielded control to his searching tongue and scraping teeth, readily, eagerly, groaning disbelief and desire up into his mouth. 

When Erhardt finally pulled away, panting raggedly atop him, Olberic licked his lips once more. He tasted blood. He didn’t mind. 

“And I should kill you, right now,” Erhardt said. “Kill you and be done with it.” His green eyes sparked with emotion Olberic could not identify, not here and now with the ghost of their kiss burning as it was. 

“It would be easier,” Olberic agreed. 

“But not easy,” Erhardt sighed. “You make everything so damned complicated, Olberic.” He pulled back and stood, then, the moment gone, grunting with the effort of it.

Olberic sat up, and brought one hand up to his own face, the bruise beneath his eye, the bloody swell of his bottom lip. “It needn’t go any further than this,” he said, softly. 

Erhardt laughed at him, standing over him, framed in the orange light of the low hanging sun at his back. He held out a hand, and Olberic took it, stumbling gracelessly up to regain his feet. Even so, Erhardt kept hold of his hand. Olberic swallowed, hard, searching his face. 

“Perhaps not,” Erhardt said, and when he squeezed his fingers he could not have known how he held his heart in hand as well. “But it will,” he sighed, and he spoke it like a promise, like a portent, like an oath.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr: [@sealticge](http://sealticge.tumblr.com) / [octopath-after-dark](http://octopath-after-dark.tumblr.com) (nsfw)


End file.
